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(CIOZone) By Layton McCartney
Running a traditional IT shop in an SMB is at best a thankless job. Typically the CIO - presuming there is one - necessarily wears several hats. In addition to managing IT, he or she may also be functioning as COO, CFO or even CEO.
Or on occasion, all of the above.
There's likely little support in the internal IT department - again, assuming there is an internal IT department. As an alternative many small and mid-sized businesses rely on resellers or VARs to keep the technology engines running, and evaluate where upgrades, changes and new technologies are needed. It's still up to the SMB CIO, however, to determine where his company's IT budget is best directed, what cuts to make and. In many case, what new options have come on the market that might prove beneficial.
Today, with many SMBs being refused additional credit by banks and seemingly ignored or forgotten by Washington, the need to count pennies and be flexible and increasing efficient when it comes to IT has never been more paramount.
The good news here, however, is that cloud computing has the potential to benefit SMBs significantly.
As an example, with the cloud's flexible pay for only what you use model, small and mid-sized companies can substantially reduce IT costs. If they need more IT horsepower to get them through the holiday season, say, no problem. And they don't need to buy more hardware and software and add to their overhead to deal with peak periods. And when usage drops off, so do costs.
In addition, with IT functions being run in the cloud - effectively outsourced -internal IT departments and IT chiefs can concentrate on tasks that are vital to the business. Cloud computing solutions are quickly implemented, relatively inexpensive and can radically reduce the IT footprint within SMB facilities. Salesforce.com, for instance, has one SMB customer that's reduced the size of its data center by two thirds.
Still. It's unrealistic to think that SMB CIOs are going to venture out into the still emerging, highly confusing and somewhat unproven cloud market on their own to acquire cloud services. Even enterprise CIOs who have far greater resources and likely more experience in evaluating emerging technologies are often reluctant to shop for offerings in the cloud bazaar without a lot of due diligence. Caveat emptor goes double or triple in this market.
Today many cloud suppliers have recently begun partnering with VARs, resellers and IT consultancies so that these middlemen can deal directly with the SMB market. For example, Salesforce.com has numerous resellers including British Telecommunications which provides its customers with cloud-based CRM capabilities. Similarly, IBM, among other vendors, is aggressively addressing the cloud SMB market through the channel.
At the same time, developers and independent software vendors are rolling out all kinds of apps aimed at SMBs. Meanwhile, enterprises are initially focusing on the cloud mainly for bread and butter infrastructure functions such as storage.
Usually, the big boys get to play with new tech tools first, but with cloud computing SMBs are moving to the head of the line.
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